The Apartment Jennifer Aniston Chose

It was inevitable. Sally Hershberger knew it more than a decade ago, when she first came to New York City from Hollywood, shears in hand, to wash-and-set the world on fire. One day she'd end up where she wanted to be. And yes, we all know that Hershberger made it to the top of the beauty peak and is now recognized around the globe for an eponymous line of hair-care products and for cuts that flatter not just a face but a whole persona (and that cost upward of $800). But this is a different story—even if it parallels that one. This is about what might be called her real-estate rise.

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It started in the late 1990s, when Hershberger, whose original base is in Los Angeles, where she maintains a salon and a residence, was trying to find a place in the West Village. She discovered a nice-enough apartment that would do for a little while. But it wasn't long before she looked up and saw terraced penthouses at the top of one of the Village's stately prewar apartment houses and made up her mind.

Styled by: Carlos Mota; Photo: William Waldron

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"Some day I'm going to live up there," she recalls thinking. She is now sitting in a bright, south-facing living room "up there," with one of those envy-inducing terraces just outside. But it doesn't feel like an apartment in a stone Art Deco building by renowned developers Bing & Bing. The layout is informal. The living room and kitchen are to the right of the entry, the bedroom and bath to the left. Thanks to pocket doors that all but disappear, the place feels open, with an offhand sense of style not unlike its owner's. The decor is a mix of furnishings and art that's comfortable and chic without looking contrived. The place is more a deluxe California crash pad than a Manhattan apartment.

"I love being downtown, in this neighborhood, because it's very cool and mellow," says Hershberger, herself a mixture of laid-back and fast-forward. "But I love this building because it's so handsome and has a doorman. It's uptown without being uptown. I don't like to rough it."

She was in that first place, a rental around the corner, for less than a year when she heard an apartment on the ninth floor of the Bing & Bing building was available. She bought it. She had scarcely moved in when, a year or so later, she learned a penthouse in the same building had come on the market. The one-bedroom was hardly enormous, but its terrace easily doubled the size. Hershberger looked at it, leapt on it, and signed up the fashionable architect Brad Floyd. (He went on to design her salon, a few blocks away, in the meatpacking district.)

Floyd stripped the place down to a shell, put in clean, mullion-free glass doors and casement windows, and made the layout as clear and spartan as possible. He installed a polished-concrete floor in the entry and bath (where he created a poured-concrete sink and tub as well) and laid warm new walnut floors in the living room and bedroom. The architect had a walnut bed fabricated, and for the kitchen, a custom-made island of iron topped with a counter of black Spanish marble.

Hershberger brought some of her own stuff—a pair of leather armchairs, a Jacobsen Egg chair, a Warhol print of Mick Jagger, a Basquiat lithograph. With the bed built in, there wasn't a lot left to do. But it still didn't feel like it was quite there. So she called in master tweaker Joe D'Urso to turn it into a place worth coming home to.

"I wanted it to be comfortable yet modern, with a smidge of color," says Hershberger matter-of-factly. "And Joe just has such amazing taste. He found the dining table and chairs, the sofa, and two light fixtures: the Panton one in the living room and that amazing glass one by Sottsass in the bedroom. Basically he just came in here, figured out what it needed and where everything should go, and was done." The soft-spoken D'Urso minimizes his contribution. "All I did was move some furniture around," he says with a smile.

Given that Hershberger grew up in California, you might think she would care more about spending time outside, on that wraparound terrace that faces south, east, and north. But the space, she says, is as much something to gaze at, or over, as it is someplace to use. "For me, this apartment is about the views," she says. "All my homes have amazing views: my place in L.A., my house in the Hamptons. But I'm not into new buildings that are all glass. I really like the feeling of privacy I get from a terrace, where the view is kind of graduated. I don't ever want to feel overly exposed. The minute I come home, the clothes come off and I end up on the bed or sofa, doing everything from there—making phone calls, answering e-mails. I like feeling tucked in a bit and still having the illusion of expansiveness."

In fact her apartment is not unlike a great hotel suite. It's not that much larger, is similar in layout, and has even nicer amenities. And Hershberger travels so much, the lines can get blurry. "Sometimes I forget," she admits, laughing, "and I want to order room service."